


Breathless

by Sylvermage



Series: In the middle of the night [1]
Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Brief appearance by the amazing Guy, Even if he wishes he didn't, Fonon Separation, Gen, Hope Jade isn't OOC here, Late Night Conversations, Nightmares, Sorry the title is lame, Spoilers from the Tower of Rem, We all know he actually cares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 03:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvermage/pseuds/Sylvermage
Summary: Jade knows about Luke's nightmares. Things get a bit more complicated when Luke's fonon deterioration enters the mix.





	Breathless

**Author's Note:**

> So, I waffled about this one a lot, not sure if Jade's characterization was quite to my liking, but eventually I just said screw it, and here we are. This has NOT been beta read, so I apologize for any spelling mistakes. If anyone would like to volunteer, I gladly welcome comments, criticism, and suggestions! Thanks for reading.

_**The air is heavy with illness and despair, burning in his lungs, and Luke doesn’t want to open his eyes. Doesn’t want to see the quarry walls towering over his head, the bodies slumped against the stone like broken dolls, the purple haze in the air poisoning everything that breathes. He keeps his eyes tightly shut and his breaths shallow and refuses to play along.** _

_**Folding his arms tight against his body, he tries to make himself small and to keep his mind blank. It’s coming, he knows it’s coming, but he won’t make it easy, as though by resisting this time, he can earn some small redemption for walking so brazenly into his mistake the first time.** _

_**His fonons start to vibrate and against his will his eyes open and his arms extend before his body, palms outstretched. The pain begins, a throbbing at his temples that intensifies to an agonizing crescendo as the particles that make up his existence clash against one another until they hit just the right frequency and his body begins to glow.** _

_**He screams, begs, fights with everything he has. It won’t do any good, but he tries anyway, thinking briefly that if he could move, if he could reach his sword or tip himself into one of the gaping mine shafts, maybe, maybe he could prevent it this time.** _

_**The pain hits its peak, and he can’t think anymore. Golden light explodes from him in waves, shattering Akzeriuth’s foundations, turning rock and buildings and bodies to dust. The ground crumbles beneath his feet, and he falls, down, down, down, away from the haze-obscured sky and the Outer Lands and plummets into the Qliphoth.** _

_**Jade told him once that landing in water from a great height was no different than hitting stone, but Luke doesn’t feel any pain as he strikes the surface of the churning quagmire and begins to sink. The last vestiges of his hyperresonance clear his mind and Luke finds he can move, but it’s far too late. The noxious sludge is like quicksand, dragging at his limbs as it sucks him down. It closes over his head, filling his nose and his ears, and when he can no longer hold his breath, it floods his mouth—** _

 

Luke’s eyes snap open and he gasps, again and again, relieved to feel air against his lips instead of poisonous, cloying mud. He sits up, pulling his legs towards his chest and curling his arms about his belly until he’s certain he’s not going to be sick.

His shoulders heave and shake as he presses his hands to his eyes, willing himself to stop crying, to calm down before he wakes Jade or Guy, but he can’t stop thinking about it, that there were probably people who survived Akzeriuth’s destruction only to fall, down and down, just like in his dream, and drown in that awful morass below, and the thought is so horrifying that it makes it hard to breathe.

…Hang on.

It’s…it’s actually _really_ hard to breathe.

Luke pulls his hands away from his face. He has been gasping for air, but he can’t seem to fill his lungs. He presses a hand against his chest and tries to breathe deeper. The sense of suffocation doesn’t abate. His pulse is a dull thudding in his ears as the blur of light-headedness begins to settle in.

…Calm down. Calm down.

Breathe.

He places a hand to his belly, trying to time the rise and fall of his chest, the expansion of his diaphragm, and that’s when he realizes: his chest isn’t rising and falling. He’s drawing in air, he can feel it pass his lips, but it isn’t reaching his lungs. And something else, the painful numbness, like pins and needles, of something giving way and becoming thin…  
Fonon separation.

Terror seizes him. Are they—the fonons in his organs—could they—is he--?!

Oh hell. Oh _hell._

In a true panic, Luke begins to take shallow, desperate breaths but there’s nowhere for the air to go. He chokes, coughs soundlessly; he can’t even cry for help. He’s shaking, body wracked with spasms of pain and primal fear.

He’s thought a lot about dying. He never imagined it like this.

Something touches his back and a burst of air, wonderful, glorious air, rushes into him. “Calm down, Luke,” Jade’s voice murmurs at his ear. “The fonons in your lungs are separating. Try to breathe normally.”

Breathe _normally_? Luke thinks, watching the spots dancing in his vision, With no _lungs_? He bursts into silent, hysterical laughter, head pounding, heart thundering in his ears. Breathe normally, he says.

Jade’s speaking again, low and even. “Listen to me. I’m pushing third fonons directly into your body so that your organs don’t shut down from lack of oxygen. It’ll pass, but you need to slow your breathing down.”

He wants to obey, but there are tiny knives in his chest, cutting apart his very cells. He only manages a few deep breaths before his body succumbs to gasping again. Tears begin to leak from his eyes.

Jade lowers himself to the edge of the bed to sit along in front of him and moves his hand from Luke’s back to his chest. He looks strange without his glasses, blood-red irises on full display. Taking Luke’s hand, he presses it against the front of his uniform tunic. “Try and match your breathing with mine.”

Jade’s chest is warm beneath his fingers, rising and falling in a steady rhythm as the Necromancer takes slow, deliberate breaths. Luke tries to imitate him, but he can’t find the pattern when his own chest still doesn’t rise; only the feel of air passing over his lips tells him he’s still breathing at all. The dull throbbing in his ears has died down as his oxygen-starved body feeds off Jade’s wind fonons, but he still feels loose and watery inside, as though he could fall apart any minute. He glances down and thinks he can see the curve of a rib beneath the hazy outline of muscle. Something bites into his palm--he’s crushing Jade’s uniform between his fingers, metal clasps digging into his skin.

Jade’s expression doesn’t change, but the hand covering Luke’s tightens a fraction. “It’ll pass, Luke. Your fonons are re-concentrating. You aren’t going to fall apart just yet.”

Jade Curtiss is a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them, and he doesn’t believe in empty platitudes either. Luke shuts his eyes and tries to relax his shoulders, focusing on the breath moving over his lips and the unchanging rise and fall of Jade’s chest beneath his hand. The sharp pain beneath his sternum is starting to fade, resolving itself into the tingling sensation he’s started to recognize as his fonons adhering to his cells once again. He presses his free hand hand to his ribs, and the flesh feels solid and real. He opens his mouth, but he still can’t make a sound, and frowns, opening one eye to peer at Jade questioningly. The Necromancer shrugs.

“I’m only feeding wind fonons to your bloodstream. Your voice is the result of air passing over your vocal chords, and unless your lungs are able to pull air through them, I’m afraid you’ll remain mute.” The corner of his mouth tilts upward in a smirk. “And wouldn’t that be a shame.”

Luke scowls, but Jade has lost that serious, burdened look to his face, and that’s better than any reassurance he could give.

Suddenly he feels his chest rise as his breath hits his lungs. He manages to inhale once, twice before his dry throat protests, and he explodes into a coughing fit. Jade removes his hand and stands up as Luke doubles forward, his lungs celebrating their renewed solidity by trying to eject themselves from his body.

From the far bed, Guy stirs. “Luke? Are you all right?”

Finally catching his breath, Luke tries to answer, but his voice is a raspy whisper, barely audible. There’s a nudge at his shoulder, and he looks up to see Jade handing him a glass of water

“Luke?” Guy asks more insistently.

Luke downs the entire glass, coughs once more, and croaks “I’m okay. Just a cough. Sorry I woke you.”

He hears the shift of bedsprings as Guy moves to get up and momentarily panics.

“That’s what happens when you sleep with your mouth open like a fish,” Jade chimes in airly. “Honestly, Guy, I’m surprised his snoring didn’t wake you already…but I suppose you couldn’t hear him over your own.”

The look Luke shoots Jade is at first surprised, then grateful. The Necromancer raises an eyebrow, and Luke remembers his line: “Shut up, Jade.”

The Necromancer waves it off. “It’s a wonder I get any sleep at all, rooming with you two,” he continues, heaving a theatrical sigh. He claims his glasses and the book he’s been reading from the bedside table and disappears out the door.

There’s a beat, then a chuckle as Guy lays down again, mollified. “Right. As if he couldn’t spring for his own room if he really wanted to. Night, Luke.”

“Night, Guy,” Luke replies, and is pleased to hear his voice has regained its usual volume. He places the empty glass on the bedside table and reclines back against his pillow, one hand pressed against his sternum. He gazes at the darkened ceiling, feeling the rhythm of his breath as it pushes his chest up and down, until he hears Guy’s breathing deepen into light snoring once more. Then he pushes back his covers and pads quietly across the room, slipping silently out into the hall.

 

This late in the night, the inn lobby was vacant, save for the clerk at the desk…and Jade in a chair in the corner, gazing out the window, his book lying untouched on the table before him. His glasses catch the dim light from the fonstone lamps as Luke approaches. “Has the pain stopped?”

Luke hums an affirmative. Jade gestures to the seat across from him and obediently, Luke sits, waiting quietly as Jade places two fingers against the pulse in his neck and counts, commands him to inhale and exhale deeply, then prods his torso with a gentle, impartial touch, his red-eyed gaze clinical and calculating behind his metal frames.

At last he stands back. “Well, as far I as can tell, you’ve stabilized.”

Luke nods in agreement. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t feel all…I don’t feel like I’m falling apart anymore.” He touches his chest. “I’m glad you knew what to do.”

“This is the first time you’ve experienced internal fonon separation?”

“Yeah…sometimes my hands get tingly, or I feel a little weak, but not like that.” Luke looks down at his hands. “I think…I think it means I’m running out of time.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Luke jerks his head up in surprise, but Jade merely shrugs and tucks his hands into his pants pockets. “Any previous living replica I’ve worked with perished in a matter of hours or days, not months or years. None has undergone the same level of trauma your body has endured, either.” One hand sneaks out to nudge his glasses up his nose. “Really, are you sure you don’t want to check in to the hospital at Belkend? You’d be a fascinating research subject.”

His tone is light, but there’s a grave shadow in his eyes, something sincere that frightens Luke more than any harsh word or pointed jab Jade could throw at him. There’s more he isn’t saying. For a moment, Luke wants to drag it out of him. Even if it’s guesswork, any estimate Jade gives is likely to be close to the truth.

He looks up at Jade, the question already forming on his lips. It’s not courage. In fact, it’s the opposite – Luke is afraid. Afraid of not knowing, afraid of closing his eyes, afraid of vanishing in the night without anyone even—

The half-formed question sticks in Luke’s throat.

…Oh.

**“As if he couldn’t spring for a room of his own if he really wanted to”.**

The group’s constant traveling meant they stayed at Inns frequently, all over the world. It had been Jade who recommended that they start taking two rooms instead of three or four where possible, to reduce the drain on their funds, and it seemed only natural to split the group so that the boys shared one room, and the girls another.

That had been shortly after the Tower of Rem.

_…Oh._

Jade is standing over him, hands shoved in his pockets and his gaze directed elsewhere, and Luke realizes he’s waiting for the stunned replica to answer to his question.

Luke could demand Jade’s best guess and push himself even harder trying to race the clock. He could ask what other symptoms Jade had witnessed, before those other replicas’ bodies gave way, and neurotically obsess over every sign of his shortening time.

Or he could admit that he’s tired, that sometimes after an encounter with a particularly trying enemy, he feels faint and fragmented, like he might fly apart, that sometimes his hands go to sleep and he worries what will happen if he becomes unstable in the middle of battle and his body weakens to the point that he can’t hold his sword. Sometimes he wonders if it wouldn’t be wiser to conserve his fonons and possibly buy him a few extra days, or even just a few extra hours.

But really, Luke figures his best chance of survival is currently standing over him, hands in his pockets, patiently waiting for his answer.

“Luke?” Jade says, a flicker of concern in his voice that pulls Luke out of his stupor. He gives a gentle shake of his head.

“There’s nothing the doctors could do for me in Belkend. I would much rather spend whatever time I have finishing the task I set out to do. Besides,” he continues, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “I spent seven years staring at four walls. Whatever we run into between now and then has got to be better than that.”

For half a second, Jade’s guard drops, a bizarre mix of surprise, amusement, and something a little softer before he covers his face with one hand. “Yes, I suppose I should have known you’d say that. He was no different, after all.” He shakes his head with a sigh. Luke wants to ask what he means, but Jade continues on, “Well then. You’d better return to bed and get what sleep you can. We’ll no doubt be setting off early.”

Luke stands, stretching his arms over his head. “Yeah, okay.” He steps past Jade, but the Necromancer doesn’t follow. “You’re not coming?”

“I think I really will read for a little while. We old folk don’t settle quite as easily as you children after being woken in the middle of the night.”

“Ah…okay.” Luke turns, but doesn’t start down the hall. Unconsciously, he brushes his fingers over his sternum. He casts a glance over his shoulder; Jade has settled back into his chair, his chin resting in one hand and his book held open in the other. “…Jade.”

He doesn’t lift his eyes from the pages, but lets out a deep sigh. “…Yes?”

“….You’re always saying that you wish you hadn’t created the things you did, and that nothing good ever comes of it. But…I’m kind of glad you know the things you do.” The hand against his chest curls into a fist. The memory of his sudden, painful disintegration, the terror of gasping in the dark, is still very fresh.

Jade flicks his eyes up briefly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in to kiss you goodnight,” he drawls.

Heat rushes to Luke’s cheeks. “Sh-shut up! That’s not--”

“Oh, do you need me to tuck you in, then? I’m sure Anise could do a much better job of it, but--”

“Would you stop? I’m not a little kid!” Luke runs a hand through his unkempt hair. Evidently this conversation is over. “Ugh, whatever. I’m going, I’m going.” He turns and starts down the hall for real. “Don’t stay up too late, old man. I don’t want to turn around and find you passed out on the battlefield.”

Jade doesn’t justify that with a response, already immersed in his book. Luke snorts quietly to himself; Jade can probably fight sleepwalking, anyway.

He returns to the room, slipping quietly through the door so as not to wake Guy, still lightly snoring in the bed nearest the door. He slides beneath the covers of the bed furthest into the room. Come to think of it, Jade somehow keeps taking the bed next to Luke’s in their three-man setup. Had Guy figured out what Jade was doing, or was he just quietly manipulating the arrangements to his satisfaction? What else had Jade been doing beneath his notice?

“Sly old bastard,” Luke mutters to himself.

He settles himself against his pillow, and tries to relax, one hand resting atop his chest as it lifts and sinks with steady regularity, matching his memory of Jade’s deep, patient breathing and beneath that, the quiet rhythm of his understated heartbeat.

 

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> *slams head off of desk* Yeah, I know, the ending is kind of cheesy. I like cheese. Sue me.
> 
> Suggestions and comments welcome! Thanks again!


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